If you’re in industrial manufacturing, and you answered yes, then you’re correct: You do need a FAQ (frequently asked questions) page. Why? Because without one, you risk losing prospects in the early stages of the buying cycle. I’ll break down how, below.
In this industry, customers tend to make large purchases where they do extensive research before even inquiring with the main company. Take it from John Hayes of Engineering.com: “The engineer will typically not disclose their contact information at this [research] stage because they don’t want to waste time responding to emails about products that may not fit their needs.” Furthermore, a recent survey found that more than half of this B2B research is done online.
In other words, engineers are doing a heavy amount of research before requesting a quote, and they’re doing most of it on your website. So, if they can’t find the information they need, and fast, they might just move on to your competition’s website.
The Problem
Engineers have a lot of options when it comes to choosing companies to buy from. In fact, Zycon – an online directory for manufacturers — lists 24,651 machine shops in the United States, and I’m willing to bet they’re missing a few thousand.
So, if potential buyers come to your website, and can’t find a specific answer they’re looking for related to a product they want to buy, they’re likely going to move on to another one of those 20,000 websites. Sure, you can combat the possibility of visitors having questions by adding tons of detailed content to your landing pages, but you cannot guarantee your visitors will read everything word-for-word (most people don’t nowadays).
The Solution
The FAQ page protects you against losing potential customers because they missed some vital information they were looking for on your landing pages. The page offers clearly displayed, direct answers to commonly asked questions, that’s a lot easier to read through than thick, wordy paragraphs. It’s an area where you can reiterate the value that you offer, and potential customers can learn what they need to know about you in as few words as possible. Your visitors will appreciate the time you saved them, and they might even navigate directly from the FAQ page to the RFQ page as a thank you — especially if you have a strong, clickable call-to-action on there.
Now that you know why you need a FAQ page, let me tell you why you should want one.
What other benefits will I get from having a FAQ page?
Your visitors aren’t the only ones saving time by you having FAQ’s on your website — you’re also saving yourself time (and therefore, money). A well-constructed FAQ page will field the irrelevant questions you commonly get asked by email or phone, opening your sales reps up for real inquiries, instead of calls like, “Do you sell to consumers?”
Secondly, you can use this page to subtly sell your company, and highlight what makes you stand out from competitors. Insert question about who your typical customers are. Answer: We have worked with anyone from the leaders in aerospace and military, to small, family-owned businesses.
See what I did there? Just by adding the word “leaders,” I made your business seem widely recognized by the most profitable companies and highly successful at what you do (which, you are). Little tricks like these will have your visitors subliminally sold, even though they’ll think they’re just reading plain questions and answers with no marketing speak.
That’s another benefit too – providing a FAQ page suggests transparency, which builds trust and long-term loyalty with customers. According to a 2017 Forbes article, “Being straightforward and truthful in terms of what the business is and is not willing to do is essential for maintaining a positive brand image.”
Lastly, the added FAQ page content with relevant keywords will also improve your search engine ranking and drive more organic traffic to your site. As said by Susan Farrell of the Nielsen Norman Group in an article about FAQ’s, people don’t search for your solution, they search for their problem. So, having your FAQ page content worded similarly to questions they might ask, could bring your website to the top of the search results.
Still, the best thing about all of this, is that you can actually track its success. Using visitor tracking, you can see how many visitors are navigating to your FAQ page, how long they’re staying, and where they’re going from there. This data will allow you to analyze how well the page is working for your business, and when the results are impressive, feel free to send me a thank you email. I can be reached at Marketing@Web-Kare.com.